the Minutes 82311: death&money

I came to collect. By the end of the Cowboys-Chargers game on Sunday I was the only one in town smiling. It got tense in BJs. Disappointment hung in the air. The sun was setting as the news came on. Revolutionaries had captured Tripoli and it looked like Quadaffy would fall, fast&easy, nice&sleazy.

The CIA couldn’t have done a better job. Raven hair in the Dallas jersey lowered the volume and put on some countrified Classic Rock. I paid my check and walked out into the record breaking heat.
Traffic on Main was murder but I made it to Houston in good time. I locked up my truck in Westheimer. I got the key out of the box and let myself in. I spent the next 17hours by the pool and in her room. The Mobile Area Media Unit was cranking it out in fine gear but the news coming downwire was strange and made me uneasy.
“You should just put it down. For now.” She said.
She’s a good girl. We had melon and mint juleps. She made coffee and grilled tuna steaks while I smoked a cigar. The shitty Texas weekend was winding down as the bells of freedom rung in the Other Hemisphere.

“I guess you can take the bike and the title. We’ll get it all notarized when you get back.” He yammered to me on Saturday. He ran his hands down the front of his pants. They were streaked with paint and oil. Rather than hitching a trailer and pulling it the hundred-sixty miles back to Austin I decided to have her follow me in the truck and ride on through, me&the King. It’s what the old man would have done.
Violence wasn’t needed. In fact it might have all seemed quite passive to passersby. I only had to communicate that it wouldn’t matter how he went down but he would be going down, with me or otherwise, should I not collect. I intimated that his whole whitetrash operation was combustible and that I liked fire. I spoke to the reptile part of his brain and he listened.

Death&money. I don’t have anything to say about Libya or a rich shitbag from Texas named Rick Perry. I’m busy running from death for money. You know what I did this summer when I got back from Berlin? I spent my first 6weeks back in this country working for a redneck Senator’s son and all my money went to traffic court and utility bills.

Things are different now but nothing has changed. The news and the news media and all your snapped poses and posturing on Facebook have made me weary.
I burned down 281 to the Pearl of the South and when I got here I just wanted to turn back around. I would have stayed in Houston longer but I had to get back to town for a “staff meeting” at noon on Tuesday. The meeting made my eyes hurt and I was left with no choice but to push back deadline for this column. Death&money. She was at the apartment making omelets when I got back. She’s a good girl. We’ll crank out this week and head on back down. All this world has made me weary. See you in Houston punk rocker, if you speak your truth plain and keep the hours of a bat.

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